Twitter is working on a new feature that would prevent people from posting offensive tweets

Twitter is a widely used social media platform and consists of users from all walks of life. While some have joined the micro-blogging site with the sole purpose of defaming others, some derive pleasure out of tweeting hurtful things to random people. In a bid to curb this menace, Twitter is working on a new feature that would prevent people from engaging in a hurtful war of words. The feature will be rolled out for the iOS users initially.

Twitter will send a notification to its users whenever they use expletives while replying to a tweet or posting a tweet. If your tweet falls under Twitter’s list of harmful language, you will be notified to think again about your tweet. Twitter can direct you to improvise your reply but it will not entirely prohibit you from publishing it.

“When things get heated, you may say things you don’t mean. To let you rethink a reply, we’re running a limited experiment on iOS with a prompt that gives you the option to revise your reply before it’s published if it uses language that could be harmful,” said Twitter.

A lot of bullying and trolling happens on Twitter and sometimes the tweets are in utter bad taste. Public personalities like the journalists, actors, and politicians are often subjected to trolling on the micro-blogging site. Since many of them have a bevy of followers, the offenders seem unfazed about posting derogatory tweets thinking that they may never get noticed. People often hide behind fake accounts to launch personal attacks on others thinking they might never get caught.

But that is not true at all because if not the person who is being subjected to the slurs, the company is definitely keeping an eye on the serial offenders.

According to a Reuters report, Twitter took action against over 396,000 accounts for using abusive language on the micro-blogging site.

“We’re trying to encourage people to rethink their behavior and rethink their language before posting because they often are in the heat of the moment and they might say something they regret,” Sunita Saligram, Twitter’s global head told Reuters about Twitter’s new feature. Twitter will start experimenting on Tuesday and that would last a couple of weeks.

Earlier, Instagram to implemented a similar feature. When posting offensive content, the users got a notification saying that the post “looks similar to others that have been reported”

Source: indiatoday